Buckle Up. It's Another Trump August.

Two out of the last three Trump Augusts have been incredible. They have been traumatic and somehow crazier than Trump’s crazy baseline. The madness begins tonight, with the airing of Trump’s interview with Axios reporter Jonathan Swan on HBO.

The scenario and the agenda seems to have been set by the news media in a traditional way. Reporters are writing that Trump has to turn things around before Labor Day, or he will lose the 2020 election. The history is clear. George W. Bush failed to turn things around in his summer of 1992. Jimmy Carter effectively lost support by the spring of 1980. Gerald Ford never had a chance in 1976.

Although Trump gets away with destroying rules and laws, I can’t see him winning re-election without cheating. So the news narrative is that Trump has to turn things around this month, right now. But there is more history at play, and it is Trump’s history. His track record in August is one of cascading disasters. We saw Charlottesville. We saw El Paso and Greenland. We also know that some of his crazy August behavior last year could be attributed to his knowledge that someone would file a complaint about his July 25 phone call with Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelensky.

Trump has to change his tone, but he won’t. He has to smile and soften his attitude. But he won’t. He has to be competent. But he never was. The game is up. Prepare for a meltdown this month. The really bad shit starts now. Yes, life has been terrible since February. I’m saying it’s about to get much worse. It’s August. It’s what August does.

The Worst August Of Trump's Presidency

I have shared this before: August can be terrible. I love it. It’s summer. But in modern world history, it’s awful.

August 2017 was a total disaster for Donald Trump. August 2018 had some major setbacks, some obstruction, and some foreshadowing of future news regarding Trump’s racism. But this August has been the worst August of Trump’s first term. There are still 8 days left to this August. And there will be at least one more Trump August.

Let’s start with how this month began, with the aftermath of two gun massacres and this - this sick, twisted, bizarre photo. This is perhaps the most obscene thing a US president and his spouse has ever done. It was this moment that we should have realized that Donald J. Trump had lost his mind. But we needed some more insanity to draw that conclusion.

It came the following week, with news that after a conversation with Senator Tom Cotton months ago, Trump became mildly obsessed with a plan for the US to purchase Greenland from Denmark. Once Trump publicly admitted the news leak (relatively rare for him), the Washington Post’s Jennifer Rubin declared that Trump had “lost it.” She finished her piece with this:

..the media and Congress should stop pretending Trump is fit to govern. He’s not. He needs to go as soon as possible, by whatever legal or electoral means possible.

But wait. There would be more. Donald Trump believes that he has done more than any president before him. On Israeli relations, he naturally thinks that he has had the most success. He also naturally thinks that any service he provides to Israel should translate into American Jewish voter support. So when he saw poll numbers showing that he will receive fewer votes from practicing Jews in 2020 than in 2016, he decided to launch a fierce, anti-semitic attack. Just as he weaponized racism against Democrats of color last month, he did it again to American Jews this month. And just in case there was any doubt or confusion as to what he meant, he repeated it, more clearly, the next day. Even the Donald Trump from 2018 might have tried to explain away his remarks via tweet, or called the video footage “fake news.” But this time, he doubled down on his bigotry and showed it off to the whole world.

When Trump launched racist attacks against Freshman Democrats of color last month, pundits tried to analyze and explain them. Even this blogger saw his racist attacks as a campaign strategy. But this month, there’s no explanation needed. Trump dropped an atomic bomb of hatred and bigotry. The Washington Post’s Dahlia Lithwick wrote:

So, Donald Trump, who just in the past two days refused to visit Denmark because it wouldn’t sell Greenland, tossed an anti-Semitic canard out to see how it landed on American Jews, retweeted a conspiracy theorist who claims Trump is the king of the Jews, reversed himself on gun policy and payroll taxes, and mulled ending birthright citizenship by way of executive order, just keeps on trucking. No check in sight.

Within the same 22 hours or so that he slandered nearly 5 Million Americans, Trump angrily canceled his state visit to Denmark. It confirmed that Trump didn’t really want to go to Denmark in the first place, even though he invited himself to visit just a few weeks ago, leaving the Danish royals, Danish government and the US State Department very little time to set up the visit and associated events.

Last year, I wrote in this blog that the Trump presidency is unsustainable. He will complete his term (or terms), but his presidency and the Republic will crash and burn before the end of his tenure. To my amazement and surprise, significant journalists are now reflecting this point of view, 30 months into his presidency. In the same piece quoted above, Dahlia Lithwick writes in terms I haven’t seen her use before. She has called Trump unfit many times, but this was -to my knowledge- the first time she acknowledged that Trump is seriously hurting us. In previous months, Trump’s tweets, erratic behavior, insults towards allies and canceled trips (how many now? two?) were analyzed as distractions from his policies and destruction of government agencies. Allies would invite him to visit less often than previous presidents, and when he would visit, they would treat him to comfort food and parades. The advice was, ignore the drama, focus on the administration’s policies, resist the administration in the courts, and wait for Trump to go away. Then, we should all encourage the next Democratic president to restore some normalcy, clean up Trump’s mess, and begin the long process of repairing the Republic.

But now, in August of 2019, there is this realization that we were sadly mistaken to wait for the next Democratic president. Trump’s presidency is destroying us. It isn’t just the policies. It’s everything he does. We need a president to be a leader and a healer. Trump only wants to pour gasoline over everything. His slander, insults, rage, temper tantrums, excessive personal time, his ignorance and his inability to think about the future are taking a serious toll on the public. The Trump presidency is destroying our national morale. It is destroying our mental health and national psyche. It is bringing a recession sooner than expected. It is making us lose sleep. It is making us drink more. And it is even, possibly, making us commit suicide more than before - especially the poor white people who voted for him. We’re in the Trump maliese. It makes the Carter malaise look like a wonderfully stable, fun and happy time. I will insist to the end that it was, dammit.

Dahlia Lithwick’s piece was prompted by an article by Matt Ford in The New Republic. It goes into detail about just how American life is much more difficult under Donald Trump. Simply put, why are we doing this to ourselves? I thought his last point was incredibly strong. Life is too short to live another day with this lunatic as our president:

He largely spends his days as president in unstructured “executive time” where he fields calls from outside advisers and ingests massive quantities of raw Fox News coverage. The work of solving the nation’s problems, except insofar as it rallies his supporters and keeps him in office, is a largely secondary concern. Soon after Trump took office, White House aides tried to persuade him that the national debt would become unsustainable in the future. “Yeah, but I won’t be here,” he reportedly replied. Trump’s time may be limited, but so is ours.

Which brings us to a third piece written within 24 hours of the previous two. James Fallows of The Atlantic explains that Trump would simply be unable to hold employment for 30 months if he were on a corporate or non-profit board, a company executive, or perhaps his best example, an airline pilot.

It took 30 months, but Trump has finally gone full lunatic. It started with twisted photos from Dayton and El Paso three weeks ago, and it continues with Greenland, full anti-semitism, and erratic economic policy. He rocked the markets again today. Just a president pouring gasoline on everything. The House should have opened impeachment proceedings in February. They were warned. They must open formal impeachment hearings immediately, even if it is only to strengthen the guardrails to keep this president -and the republic- from falling off a cliff. Trump's wear and tear on the citizenry is finally showing. We've very tired, and we’ve had enough. The House shouldn’t be in recess. it should be working on articles of Impeachment six days a week.

The final Trump Tower press conference on August 15 2017 was incredible. But so was this press gaggle on August 21 2019. The two together show a man who is not just unfit for office, but incredibly unhinged, angry and dangerous to us all.

If you drink, please continue to do so. Responsibly, of course.

Slate Recycles David Plotz' August Essay Again

It is becoming a classic.

As I said in an earlier post about this, brace yourselves. August is not over. There is more fear to spread around before Labor Day.

It's August. Brace Yourselves.

Cartoon by the great Ted Rall. (Yes, I said great).

It is August, the month with a very bad rap. While I don't agree with all of his assessments, this article by David Plotz has become somewhat famous since it does sum-up a lot of reasons to dislike August (and it helps that Slate re-posted it in 2006). But what makes it worth reading each year for me is the context in which it was written. Look at the original date. Remember those times? Those were the days, right?

What were we talking about by the water cooler seven Augusts ago? We had a missing, white, female intern in Washington (what was her name again?). We had rumors that Bobby Fischer was resurfacing in Internet chat rooms. We were content with our economy, despite the dot-com bust. And according to our president, we lived under the false notion that the Atlantic and Pacific oceans protected us. But George W. Bush knew better. He was working hard to protect us from attack, right?

He was in Crawford, Texas all that month. But make no mistake, it was a working vacation. On August 6th, he was handed a Presidential Daily Briefing (PDB) that sprung him to action. It had an unmistakable warning in its title. What was the title, again? Anyone?

Dr. Rice, maybe you remember? You weren't there in Crawford, but you were the NSA Director. You might know.

Riiiiiiight. Bin laden Determined to Strike in US. Thank you for feigning the recall of that title, Doctor. Nice effect.

And George W. Bush applied his success in August 2001 to other crises that occurred in future Augusts. Like this one in late August 2005. Imagine the catastrophe that would have ensued had FEMA not recognized that the citizens of New Orleans were unable to evacuate, and that the levees were likely to break. Imagine that.

So sleep tight, America. There's no need to worry about our leaders. They are waking-up every morning with our safety and security as their top priority. They will protect us. I have no doubt.